I’m not entierly sure why i was looking at my old uni user space last night at godawful times of the morning, but i decided to update its front page to point to warmfusion.co.uk. To do that i logged in via Webdav (well.. i used NetDrive to map it to a drive letter) and i found all sorts of cool stuff.
Warmfusion along the ages Warmfusion Original The user site is the original edition of my new alias of warmfusion created back in early 04. Sitting on the floor of my grans house at Xmas designing a new madtaj website i decided to scrap the name for something new and easier to spell. After much thinking warmfusion was decided upon Warmfusion V2 Design The template design layout for warmfusion i made the next year around Christmas again. I get the feeling that i’m easily distracted at xmas. i seem to do work when i dont have a net connection Warmfusion V2 Implemented A working version of my site, now bare in mind this is the design i created first, this blog came second. The blog is a Wordpress theme i created to match my original design. That site is what i started with.
Rome 0.0v
My disertation is to do a crowd simulation, now ive already played with such things and i actually found my old flocking code that i wrote back in September 04, Croxy wrote me the graphics rendering engine and i wrote the AI systems behind it. Flockers and Evaders I’ll have to write an applet version of Rome so people can get an online demo
I also found something that shows how much we’ve changed, or griff at least, some logos i created many moons ago. including one for GoatBoy [ Linky ] *sigh*
MyIsland.jpg - Picture i rendered of a pretty island Matrix - Some geeky code of matrix chars spelling warmfusion.co.uk My Old Blog - My old blog before i converted the theme extensivly to make into warmfusion as it is today
I updated the Notices page on Planet Comscare with news that i was thinking of making a noo theme, I couldnt help myself and added a few sneaky features already. You may have noticed the little + next to the titles of each post, its the beginning of a cookie based system of showing/hiding all posts from users or wotever so you only see posts from people u want to (ie, not urself as u know what uve written).
The other less noticable feature is the navigation bar has been upgraded so you can place stuff where you want it, again this isnt complete as i dont actually store your prefered layouts etc but after half hour work its not a bad start
For those who are interested i’m using the Javascript Framework from script.aculo.us with the Prototype engine behind it. Its all very clever stuff
Despite the uncategorical devotion of people like Mike and Croxy to this language framework called Ruby on Rails I am still a skeptic. Sure, its nice to be a lazy programmer and create a blog in 15 minutes, but do you know how it WORKS. if you get the darknexus classic error of “APPLICATION ERROR” does that really help you find out what you’ve done wrong or if its even a flaw in the overall framework. I have many critisisms of principles Rails but as i freely admit, i have not tried the language out itself as of yet. What with projects and web-dragon work not to mention a certain lady i havnt had the time to do anything experimental.
However, to make my point felt a bit stronger heres an article written by a Ruby fan who predicts that while Ruby on Rails will remain around it will never become mainstream. And rather beautifully compares its users to those of Smalltalk 30 years ago with an example that just made me think of Andrew.
[ Why ruby on rails wont become mainstream ]
You know the anti spam measures used on websites, those annoying boxes of garbled text convoluted in such grotesque manners to usualy require concentration and a level of guesswork that just isnt needed in the modern day.
Enter Oli, a random guy who got fed up of the boxes filled with symbols and wanted a new method of authentication. In a stroke of genius (althou ive seen similar methods, but nothing this cute) he created the Kitten Authentication System. All you need to do is click the three kittens on the page to be authenticated, simple yet adorable
Ahh, its a tricky question for the world, mostly because its more or less a game of pin the tail on the atlas. And to demonstrate this principle some enterprising Americanos decided to do a street survey and asked people to name where the US should invade next, and to help the viewers also got them to stick a pin into an atlas of where these coutries are. The fun bit is how the atlas is slightly wrong in the the nice big obvious country a the bottom (being Oz) is labeled North Korea, with New Zealand being South Korea.
Watch it, its painful
Update: Linz noticed the awsome text at the bottom of the video, and i did some research, the vid is from a tv show in america that was canceled a few years ago. www.cnnnn.com has a fantastically funny news ticker at the bottom of the site that i’m thinking of placing onto warmfusion cos its great. Example: “Humpback whale changes sex after massage”
Ok, as Linzi had a go at me about my previous rant and i want to clarify my position about the issue of creationism in science class. Its NOT about creationism per say, its about the political correctness of forcing a belief issue into a class not suited to its teaching. I am against the idea of what is basically a story in the media pushing the idea that our schools need to reform their approachs to the teaching of these subjects. Yes teach creationism, i think its a damn find principle, as is evolution theory, but dont mould them together to make the polititians go “Look at us creationist types, we’re keeping your loud outspoken members appeased”
And in a continuation of the same theme, i found out that once more stupid politics is coming back to haunt our schools.
After a survey of just 1,200 pupils (ie, a single comprehensive worth) it was found out that Boys like Bangs and Girls like Gyms, shocking stuff. Aparently, most boys questions wanted to know about Explosive chemicals, atom bombs, meteors and i quote: “(the) effect of strong electric shocks and lightning on the body”, girls however are far more interesting in human biology and keeping fit and healthy. Now this sounds all well and dandy to me, Chemistry is for Boys, Biology is for girls, physics is for both/neither depending on ur opinion.
Where is all gets a bit annoying is the beeb are reporting that because of the drop in science class uptake by students is due to males and females liking different things relating to these subjects. Nothing to do with the fact that the curriculum and rules regarding teaching are now so stringent that in my Biology classes we wernt allowed to do discection on anything with blood, or in chemistry experiments were limited to simple reactions with no real interest. The most fun i had was when making soap which proved to be so caustic it left burns on the skin.
The solution to this problem is obvious to the idiot politians aparently, if girls like biology and boys like chemistry why not make a syllabus that focuses on the differnece between the sexes and force each gender to learn different content. Thus creating a massive divide in knowledge. Imagine a University degree requireing “Females only” due to the male course not teaching the required preqrequisites. It sounds unlikely doesnt it, but guess what, thats exactly what some people are calling for.
The univesities are commenting on the large drop in intake for subjects such as chemistry and maths, but i feel this is probably misleading as “Chemistry” as a subject is not limited to just that, you also have Chemical Engineering, BioChemistry etc etc, Chemistry by itself is not a single subject anymore, three years ago Comsci had two undergrade courses, Computer Science and Computer Systems Engineering, now it has seven, does that mean Cardif university is seeing a 50% drop in computer Science intakes? probably, but the overall student intake for the dept. is probably exactly the same.
Statistics are just a tool of hysteria without the correct backup.
Source: BBC News - Science interest splits the sexes
“Creationist theories about how the world was made are to be debated in GCSE science lessons in mainstream secondary schools in England.
The subject has been included in a new syllabus for biology produced by the OCR exam board, due out in September. “ BBC News
Farewell sensible studies placed into their own sensible categories. Science is taught in Science classes, Religious/Belief matters are taught in RE classes. This Cross mix of ideals is going to make students get so damn confused about what is Hypothesis based on repeatable observations and evidence with Hypothesis based on opinion and conjecture. Science classes are based on evidences and experimentation which produce facts, two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen, a bit of heat and bosh, Water. Creationism is not based on experimentation, its based in the minds of the people who wrote it. Its a fiction written to satisfy the minds of the easily swayed, while i personally think that if you want to belive in Inteligent Design is upto you and i will not stop you or change your mind. Its your own damn choice, but to blur the two ideologies as if the two are created based on the same principles, its like comparing the creation of a Car from plans to the creation of a Flower from a seed. The two are immutable, the do not cross over.
The end of intelligent debate is over, all problems dont need to be solved with evidence and facts, why bother when u can guess and if it turns out to be wrong blame someone else.
[ Creationism isn GCSE Papers ] [ Flying Spaghetti Monster ]
After news that the Beeb were looking into streaming out BBC 2 over the net a few months ago, a trial was setup. Now while this needed registrations and suchlike it was a bit of a flawed system. Locked into Windows Media Player, the interface was buggy, it wasnt that fun to use.
However, the boffins at BBC R&D have been tinkering away and have released a Trial Multicast of BBC and ITV channels. Yup, ITV are involved as well, this is how big this move is. The multicast trial is only avaliable to users of certain multicast enabled ISPs, if your isp is one of these :
You’re in luck. However, as NTL isnt on that list i cant actually test it, BUT Janet is, and Uni machines (and henceforth laptops on that network) are multicast enabled.
Check out the BBC Test Page here
The channels avaliable are: BBC News, 1,2,3 and 4, ITV 1,2,3,4, Local, and all the BBC National Radio Channels. Its a brilliant move to the future, sod this crappy MPEG digital wireless nonsence, go REALLY digital with upgradable codex, variable bit streams and general cleverness.
Huzzah to the BBC
[ BBC Multicast Trial ]
Its coming together at last, i decided to take time off from fixing the vector maths that are causing me alot of headaches and spruced up the interface and functions. I also fixed the Crowd Panel threads so rendering is done in its own thread at last. no more locking from sleeping the wrong threads. I dont feel like its so far from being workable, i can implement loading alternate XML Scene sheets easily now, runtime controls are hooked up properly, all i need is to make a DataPanel which holds a list of the entities on a scene for detailed feedback of the plebians on a floor. This should also be relativly simple i hope. I designed my system to allow for this kind of extention and while i didnt think to do this at the start it should be easy enough to do.
*crosses fingers* and i appologise for the non funny blog, but i felt happy about todays blob of work
UpdateIve updated the interface alot, added a list of plebian elements which when selected are displayed in the main crowd window
Information: The layout of this site has adjusted to your screen size. 
